COCHRANE: QMJHL playoffs suddenly get serious

The Gatineau Olympiques were an impressive but not overwhelming club this past regular season.

The Olympiques finished a solid eighth overall in the QMJHL, with a 41-23-1-3 record for 86 points.

Those numbers were good, but pale in comparison to the Halifax Mooseheads’ second overall regular-season standing of 47-18-0-3 for 97 points.

So why is the second-round Gatineau-Halifax clash that opens tonight at the Metro Centre such an intriguing series?

It’s because of the potential of this series.

Certainly, after the one-sided results from most of the first round of playoffs, it’s good to get back to hockey where the outcomes aren’t so easily predictable.

Last year, Halifax routinely swept past Gatineau on its way to the QMJHL title. But this is a better Gatineau team. Halifax is still the favourite, though this time Gatineau is anticipated to be anything but a soft touch.

Gatineau dominated a decent Cape Breton team in four straight in this year’s opening round, just as easily as Halifax pushed Charlottetown aside in four games. Gatineau is also reportedly healthy again, after a regular season marked by injuries that certainly hurt the overall stats.

And, despite the numbers that favour Halifax, Gatineau’s history of peaking in the playoffs can’t be ignored.

This is a series where fans will be watching the two benches closely, comparing the results of teams directed by Halifax’s Dominique Ducharme and Gatineau’s Benoit Groulx.

The veteran Gatineau coach is regarded as a master at the head-to-head strategy in playoff hockey. It will be interesting to see how he and the highly regarded Ducharme fare against each other this time.

Given Gatineau’s overachieving playoff record under Groulx, this series could be closer than the regular-season numbers suggest it should be.

I like Halifax in six.

NBL’s PR DISASTER

Apparently, the Windsor entry in the National Basketball League of Canada doesn’t like the way London Free Press columnist Morris Dalla Costa does his job.

That’s their prerogative.

But to give the veteran writer the boot from the arena a half-hour before Windsor and London met in Game 7 of the NBL semifinals Tuesday night was simply wrong.

Dalla Costa writes that he was told by arena staff to leave the building and was also told that Windsor ownership was behind the order. Apparently, NBL staff in attendance didn’t intervene to stop the order from being carried out.

Even if they disagree with what Dalla Costa writes, removing him from the building reflects poorly on the Windsor organization and the NBL.

The defensive position the

NBL brass has taken on this

controversy — considering that the league can’t get national sports media recognition and has had a difficult time making inroads into Ontario markets other than London — is simply another example of bad strategy.

I’m baffled why the league seems on a course to alienate an Ontario media that it really should be courting in these difficult times.

CAVE, GAUTHIER STAYING IN TOUCH

The upcoming clash between Canada’s two top super bantamweights, Halifax’s Tyson Cave and Quebec’s Sebastien Gauthier, brings with it plenty of history.

The 23-2 Cave, 32, and the 22-4-1 Gauthier, 31, may be longtime friends but they’re also

intense competitors from

amateur days when they battled each other for Canadian titles

and their places on the international amateur boxing pecking order.

Now they are fighting for world ratings in the professional ranks, with Cave now enjoying the best one with his No. 8 slot in the WBA.

There are reports that, while preparing for Tuesday night’s showdown at the prestigious Shaw Festival boxing show in Toronto, the two boxers have been trading shots with each other on Facebook.